Wishful Thinking

She's only a child. She wants, so desperately, to have friends again. But no one pays any attention to her. No one talks to her or plays with her. They only ignore her. Why? This is a 600 word short story.

Sasha and I apologize for the delay of book four of our Amanda Ackers series. We have both had some health issues, so, my writing is on hold for a while.

We are very thankful to you all, for supporting our work, which we do for the enjoyment as new authors.

Our thanks also, to the many of you who have emailed us with kind comments on our stories and the first three books of our novel series, and those who have requested receiving a pre-release version. We had never thought of doing a pre-release, but thought it was a great idea! It gave many a chance to read book two and three of Amanda’s adventures, before we actually published it. Thanks to all of you!

We are most humbled by the response we have received, and thank you from the top, middle and bottom of our hearts!

If anyone would like to correspond with us, please shoot us an email when you get the chance, we would love to hear from you.

Email us at: GlennAndSasha@gmail.com

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Hello and thank you for visiting our Smashwords.com page.

My name is Sasha Gabriel, and I would like to take a few moments to say a little about Glenn and myself.

They say that creativity belongs to the young. Well, not always. Young at heart, I’ll buy, but nothing else.

Writing is relatively new for me. I’ve been an avid reader for most of my 60+ years. But writing seemed daunting. How do you write an idea to get over to other people without boring them to death? How do you write conversations that sound like the people who are speaking them?

Once I studied the “how to’s” a bit, and with the encouragement from Glenn, my wonderful husband and best friend, I started writing.

And I love it. So does Glenn.

Writing has opened a door for me that nothing else has – my imagination has soared and I’m absolutely thrilled and thankful, from the bottom of my heart, that others like my writing, as well.

Both Glenn and I have written and published very, very short stories (no more than 600 word stories) because these were also entered into a writing contest with that directive.

At the same time, both Glenn and I are writing novels (Glenn’s is awesome!!!! Think the depth of Lord of the Rings with the immediacy of Harry Potter and you’ve got it!).

But I want to share something with you all… Glenn has battled Dyslexia, Dyscalculia and Dysgraphia almost his entire life. That’s a mouthful, for sure, but try living with them on a daily basis!

Even so, Glenn has worked to overcome the more serious side effects and his talent in writing, painting, and all over creativity is nothing short of staggering.

Honestly… I’m running to keep up with him but I’m mostly just out of breath!

So… the bottom line is… we’re all just human with all our challenges and it’s those challenges that make what we create that much better.

Please… If you like to read… then write. For writing, get to your keyboard and begin. If you don’t know how start, or where to find ideas for a story or chapter, please contact Glenn. He has helped over 30 people to date get started, and published, and does it for FREE.

We think you’ll surprise yourself at your talents if you just give writing a try.And, again… Thank You all for your kind and generous words of appreciation for our stories!

It means the world to us!

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Glenn here.

Just wanted to add that we never thought anyone would even read our work, let alone have downloaded our little stories now over 300,000 times.

Because of the kind words from you all, I will continue to write. I have, as Sasha had mentioned, been writing the Amanda Ackers novel series, with Sasha contributing several chapters to each book. I now have 21 other novels started.

I had only begun writing the novel for fun, for our grandson Logan. I was not going to publish it, just print it out to give to him. However, with all the encouragement I have received via email, from those reading our little short stories, I have decided to publish the Amanda Ackers series for FREE here on Smashwords.com. The series is also in print on Amazon.com and CreateSpace.com, but of course, being in print, I have to charge for them. My many thanks to all of you, for your continued support.

Please feel free to contact Sasha and I at the following email address. We would love to hear from you, even to just say hi:

Reviews

I was told about this story by Micheal Carter, so in truth i knew what it was about, but because it is so short I thought i may as well give it a read anyway.

It is fairly good but I'd have to agree with Mick Carter and Steve Latchey of it being a lot like many other stories out there. However, it was also done with a nice style, and the writing had no chunky boring bits stuck within, so for a quick read it was'nt too bad and done better than most of the simular ghost stories I read.

I have read the introductions of this man and wife writing team on their Smashwords page. They seem to be a really nice, likeable couple who are finding some great success with their writing. I also applaud that [so far] they are keeping their popular Amanda Ackers novels free; it is a brave decision in this money-oriented world.

However, I have to be honest about this story. It's fairly well-written, and gets the narrative across, but I found the story horribly cliched from the very beginning. From the first couple of lines I sensed where it was going, and there was no further twist or unexpected ending. The story would perhaps work better for younger readers. This is not a nasty review, just an honest one, and I pass best wishes for the future to these likeable authors.

This is a story which starts in one fashion, and ends in a completely different, and unexpected manner. The conclusion provides a great jolt to the emotions, and is very well-handled, the story as a whole making ample use of its brief length to maximum effect.